Overview

POPL 2026 will host an ACM Student Research Competition, where undergraduate and graduate students can present their original research before a panel of judges and conference attendees. This year’s competition will consist of three rounds:

• Round 1, Extended abstract: All students are encouraged to submit an extended abstract outlining their research. The submission should be up to three pages using “\documentclass[acmsmall,nonacm]{acmart}”.

• Round 2, Poster at POPL: Based on the submissions, a panel of judges will select the most promising entrants to participate in a poster session at POPL. In the poster session, students will be able to interact with POPL attendees and judges. After the poster session, three finalists in each category (graduate/undergraduate) will be selected to advance to the next round.

• Round 3, Oral presentation at POPL: The last round will consist of a short oral live presentation at POPL to compete for the final awards in each category. This round will also select an overall winner who will advance to the ACM SRC Grand Finals.

Call for Submissions

POPL invites students to participate in the Student Research Competition in order to present their research and get feedback from prominent members of the programming language research community. Please submit your extended abstracts through HotCRP: https://popl26src.hotcrp.com

Submissions must be original research that is not already published at POPL or another conference or journal. One of the goals of the SRC is to give students feedback on ongoing, unpublished work. Furthermore, the submission must be authored solely by the student. If the work is collaborative with others and/or part of a larger group project, the submission should make clear what the student’s role was and should focus on that portion of the work.

Each submission should include the student author’s name and e-mail address; institutional affiliation; research advisor’s name; ACM student member number; category (undergraduate or graduate); research title; and an extended abstract addressing the following:

• What problem does the submitted work try to solve and why is that problem important?

• What is the state-of-the-art in related areas and how the submitted work departs from others?

• Sufficient background information and details of the presented approach to allow POPL audiences to appreciate the presented work.

The submission should be up to three pages using ‘\documentclass[acmsmall,nonacm]{acmart}’. The submission does not itself need to start with an “abstract”; the introduction can start immediately after the author list. Reference lists do not count towards the three-page limit. You may write appendices after the three-page limit, but please be noted that the committee is not required to read them.

This year, we will have two review cycles. For each submission, one of the following decisions will be made:

• Accept: submissions that proceed to the next round unconditionally.

• Conditional Accept: submissions that receive revision suggestions from the PC members. Authors will have 3 days to revise the submission accordingly and then resubmit. The revised submissionss will then be re-evaluated, and either accepted or rejected.

• Reject: submissions that will not proceed to the next round.

Prizes

The top three graduate and the top three undergraduate winners will receive prizes of $500, $300, and $200, respectively.

• All six winners will receive award medals and a one-year complimentary ACM student membership, including a subscription to ACM’s Digital Library.

• The names of the winners will be posted on the SRC website.

• The first-place winners of the SRC will be invited to participate in the ACM SRC Grand Finals, an online round of competitions among the winners of other conference-hosted SRCs.

Eligibility

The SRC is open to both undergraduate (not in a PhD/master’s program) and graduate students (in a PhD/master’s program). Upon submission, entrants must be enrolled as a student at their universities and be current ACM student members.

Furthermore, there are some constraints on what kind of work may be submitted:

• Previously published work: Submissions should consist of original work (not yet accepted for publication). If the work is a continuation of previously published work, the submission should focus on the contribution over what has already been published. We encourage students to see this as an opportunity to get early feedback and exposure for the work they plan to submit to the next POPL.

• Collaborative work: Graduate students are encouraged to submit work they have been conducting in collaboration with others, including advisors, internship mentors, or other students. However, graduate submissions are individual, so they must focus on the contributions of the student.

• Team submissions: Team projects will be only accepted from undergrads. One person should be designated by the team to make the oral presentation. If a graduate student is part of a group research project and wishes to participate in an SRC, they can submit and present their individual contribution to the group research project.